1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a radio terminal, and in particular, to a device and method for generating various ring tones in a radio terminal.
2. Description of the Related Art
A radio terminal, such as a cellular phone or a paging receiver, generates a ring tone (calling tone) or vibrates upon receipt of an incoming call to notify the user of the call receipt.
Referring to FIG. 1, a generally known radio communication system includes a calling (or originating) terminal 100, a wired exchange 110, a radio base station 120 and a called (or destination) radio terminal 130. In operation, the calling terminal 100 connects with the wired exchange 110 and inputs a phone number (or a unique number) of the radio terminal 130 to be called. The wired exchange 110 then analyzes the phone number received from the calling terminal 100 and calls the radio terminal 130 by way of the radio base station 120. In response to a received calling signal, the called radio terminal 130 will typically vibrate or generate an audible signal such as a specific ring tone, according to a vibration mode or a ring mode, to notify the user of the incoming call. In the ring mode, the called radio terminal 130 generates a ring tone which is preselected by the user, from a plurality of ring tones stored therein. Conventional radio terminals only store a limited number of selectable ring tones. Therefore, the user often cannot choose a ring tone suitable to his or her preference. In addition, since the conventional radio terminal has limited types of the ring tones, it is not unusual for one terminal to be set to generate the same ring tone as that of another terminal. In this case, when several users of radio terminals which are all set to the same ring tone are in close proximity to each other and one of the users is called, all the nearby users may believe that the ring tone is from their terminal.
Further, in the conventional radio terminal, all incoming calls generate the same ring tone, therefore, the user cannot determine the identity or priority of the calling party (caller) from the conventional ring tone.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a device and method for generating various ring tones suitable to the user""s preference in a radio terminal.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a device for generating a user input ring tone in a radio terminal.
It is further another object of the present invention to provide a method for downloading a ring tone from a database and generating the downloaded ring tone in a radio terminal.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a method for generating a ring tone selected by a caller in a radio terminal.
It is further still another object of the present invention to provide a method for determining the identity of a caller upon hearing a ring tone in a radio terminal.
According to a first aspect of the present invention, a ring tone generating device includes a ring tone input device for receiving ring tones input from a user; a ring tone storage for storing the ring tones input from the ring tone input device; a ring tone generator for generating one of the ring tones stored in the ring tone storage, selected by the user, under the control of a controller; and the controller for generating the ring tone selected by the user through the ring tone generator, upon reception of an incoming call. Preferably, the ring tone is any one of a voice, music and a sound.
According to a second aspect of the present invention, a method for generating a ring tone in a radio terminal of a radio communication system including a database for storing the ring tone, includes the steps of: receiving a phone number of a radio terminal input by a user and a ring tone to be stored in the radio terminal of the input phone number; storing the input ring tone in the database in association with the input phone number of the radio terminal; calling the radio terminal and downloading the ring tone corresponding to the phone number of the radio terminal stored in the database to the radio terminal, when the radio terminal is in an idle state; storing the downloaded ring tone in the radio terminal; and generating the ring tone upon reception of an incoming call.
According to a third aspect of the present invention, a method for generating a ring tone in a radio terminal including a ring tone storage for storing a plurality of ring tones each having different ring tone numbers, includes the steps of: receiving an RF signal transmitted from a base station; analyzing the received RF signal to determine whether the RF signal contains data corresponding to the ring tone number for selecting the ring tone; and generating the ring tone corresponding to the ring tone number out of the ring tones stored in the ring tone storage, when the RF signal contains the data corresponding to the ring tone number.